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But no evidence of this has ever been discovered. He is not known to have had the personal acquaintance of an American, and his tastes were sup- posed to have been aristocratic rather than democratic. It would also have been supposed that the organization of an in- stitution which was to carry his name down to posterity would have been a sub- j ect of long and careful thought, and of conversation with friends, and would have been prescribed in more definite lan- guage than that used in the will. Some note, some appended paper would cer- tainly be found communicating his vie\\-7's. But nothing of the sort has ever come to light. History, to be sure, has tended to lend support to the fame-through- founding theory-the Smithsonian is certainly more of a household word than smithsonite-but I am not so sure. SmIthson knew that he was a chemist and that he enjoyed the respect of Berzelius, Ampère, Arago, and Beu- dant, but how much could he have counted on becoming the founder of the institution specified, at one remove, in his will? Let us examine this con- troversial document. "I, James Smithson, son to Hugh, first Duke of Northumberland, and Elizabeth, heiress of the H ungerfords of Studley and niece of Charles the Proud, Duke of Somerset [Charles was born in 1662, so he must have been a rather remote uncle], now residing in Ben- tinck Street, Cavendish Square, do this twenty- third day of Octoher, 1826, make this my last will and testa- men t," it begins, and, after instructing his bankers, the Messrs. Drummond, to pay an annuity of one hundred pounds to John Fitall, "for- I ". mer y my servant, contInues: To Henry James Hungerford, my nephe\v, heretofore called Henry James Dickinson, son to my late brother Lieu- tenant Colonel Henrv Louis Dickinson [probably another s.on of Smithson's mother and the Duke of N orthumber- land] . . . I give and bequeath for his life the whole of the income arising from my property of every nature and kind what- ever, after the payment of the above an- nuity, & after the death of John Fitall, that annuity likewise. . . . Should the said Henry James H unger- ford have a child or children, legitimate or illegitimate, I leave to such child or children, his or their heirs, executors, & assigns, after the death of his, or her, or their father, the whole of my property of every kind absolutely and forever to be divided between them, if there is more than one, in the manner their father shall judge proper, or in case of his omitting to decide this, as the Lord Chancellor shall judge proper. Should my said neph- e"' Henry James Hungerford marry, I empower him to make a jointure. In the case of the death of my said nephew without leaving a child or chil- dren, or of the death of the child or children he may have had, under the age of twenty-one years or intestate, I then bequeath the whole of my property, sub- j ect to the annuity of one hundred pounds to John Fitall, and for the security and payment of which I mean stock to remain in this country, to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. . . . Smithson's nephew, who was also illegitimate, was twenty-three at the time of his uncle's death; he died six years later, a chIldless bachelor. Could his uncle have expected this young man to remain unmarried and without issue , legitimate or illegitimate ? Was his chancy bequest a presumably meaning- less afterthought-a cursory thumbing of the nose at the Royal Society, which, according to Louis ...J\gassiz, the famous biologist and an 1863-73 Smithso- nian Regent, had rejected Smithson's later scientific papers, causing him to revoke an earlier will naming it as his beneficiary? A gesture of friend- ship (but, if so, why? ) to a country he had never seen and with whIch he had no connection I'm afraid I must wind up my exegesis in the mood of Mr. Kotschenreither's Public Library pic- ture- "Puzzled." The immediate aft- ermath of Smithson's enigmatic bequest is as full of surprises as the Museum of Natural History rotunda was during the years when It brought Dr. Carmichael and me up short. Upon receiving his copy of the will, Mr . Vail, our London chargé d'affaires, forwarded it to the Secretary of State, John Forsyth, with a letter that contained a sentence (the one that prompted Mr. Adams' "supposed-to- be-insane" diary entry) for which Mr. Rhees, the chief clerk of the Institution, delicately substituted a row of asterisks in a two-volume compilation, "The Smithsonian Institution: Documents Relative to Its Origin and History, 1835-1899," that he published in 1901. "The caption of the Will," the con- cealed sentence reads, "is in language which might induce a belief that the Testator labored under some degree of * J h 1\ t \